Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth Commentary by Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.<\/title><meta name= \"description\" content= \"Macbeth commentary addresses major themes, major characters such as Lady Macbeth, Macduff, Banquo, King Duncan, sources, literary analysis, drama theory.\"><\/head><\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Commentaries on Shakespeare’s Tragedies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-4f6cdd05 uag-hide-mob\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-dcba7b2a wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">HOME<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div 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target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">GUIDES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-d5da63d7 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/shakespeare-links\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">LINKS<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-19d28286\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-69502be5 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act1\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 1<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0ec42142 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act2\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 2<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-6ac70dcb wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act3\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 3<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-bfd6ecc9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act4\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 4<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-55716ff6 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act5\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 5<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0246bad9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#endnotes\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ENDNOTES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nShakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 917-69.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOf Interest: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rsc.org.uk\/macbeth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">RSC Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/Library\/Texts\/Oth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ISE Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakespeare-online.com\/sources\/macbethsources.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">S-O Sources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/explore\/shakespeare-in-print\/first-folio\/bookreader-68\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1623 Folio 741-61 (Folger)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=hvd.32044004536116&seq=7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Shakespeare\u2019s Holinshed: Chronicle & Plays Compared<\/em><\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A68198.0001.001\/1:31?rgn=div1;view=fulltext\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Holinshed’s Chronicles \u2026 <\/em>“Macbeth”<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/cgi\/t\/text\/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A29962.0001.001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">*Buchanan’s Rerum Scoticarum Historia<\/em> (1582 Latin later trans.)<\/a> <\/em>|<\/p>\n\n\n\n*Buchanan: See Book VI, Murder of King Duffus; Book VII, Duncan and Macbeth; Mackbeth, the Eighty-Fifth King.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act1\">ACT 1<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 1 (917-18, three witches establish the when and where for their first meeting with the valiant warrior Macbeth.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth <\/em>begins not by introducing us to the main characters, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, but to the three witches or \u201cweird sisters\u201d who will tempt this ordinarily loyal thane of Scotland\u2019s King Duncan. These strange women\u2019s sense of expectation is palpable as they establish the time and place for the meeting they already know is coming with the Thane of Glamis and his fellow soldier Banquo.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe witches\u2019 concluding chant in this scene is, \u201cFair is foul, and foul is fair, \/ Hover through the fog and filthy air\u201d (918, 1.1.11-12). They pray, then, for a world turned upside down, and in place of groundedness and certainty, for a \u201chovering\u201d through the dark and stormy elements. As Hecate will later say, much of human life is about satisfying ambition but also about finding security, achieving the sure thing. With these two baits, they will hook Macbeth and reel him in.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn his lectures on Shakespeare, Coleridge says that the value of supernaturalism in Macbeth <\/em>is to set an excited tone right away and prepare us for Macbeth\u2019s killing of Duncan in Act 2. <a href=\"#_edn1\" id=\"_ednref1\">[1]<\/a> But as Coleridge knows, the supernatural is more than a plot device: the insight of the witches is authentic. These characters are more than a metaphor for states of mind or human tendencies such as ambition. Evil is a power in Shakespeare\u2019s world, and the man for whom the play was written, King James I, himself wrote on the subject of daemonology.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIndeed, the Norton editors remind us that the witches are never apprehended or punished once Macbeth is dead and Malcolm inherits the throne, and they refer to the play\u2019s \u201cnebulous infection, a bleeding of the demonic into the secular and the secular into the demonic.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn2\" id=\"_ednref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 2 (918-19, an exhausted messenger reports to the Scottish king Duncan with the details of a battle against rebels; Macbeth and Banquo figure prominently in his account; Duncan sentences the rebellious thane of Cawdor to death, and dispatches messengers to inform Macbeth, thane of Glamis, that the title now belongs to him.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth is already a hero when the play begins. Much of what is narrated in Scene 2 concerns his bravery during the battles against the rebels Macdonald and Cawdor as well as the King of Norway. His martial valor exceeds that of everyone else in the field, and there\u2019s an exuberant quality to his actions in the service of King Duncan:<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth, as reported by a fellow soldier, could not have been braver: he, \u201cDisdaining fortune with his brandished steel, \/ Which smoked with bloody execution, \/ Like valor\u2019s minion carved out his passage \/ Till he faced the slave [Macdonald] \u2026\u201d (918, 2.17-20), killed the rebel, and fixed his head at the top of the Scottish battlements. So the image of the bold and loyal warrior is set, and Macbeth will be able to use this well-earned image to his advantage against Duncan, just as the former Thane of Cawdor did.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 3 (919-23, the three witches hail Macbeth as \u201cThane of Glamis,\u201d \u201cThane of Cawdor,\u201d and finally as \u201cking hereafter\u201d; Banquo, they declare, will sire kings, but never be one himself; after the witches vanish, Ross and Angus report to Macbeth that he is now Thane of Cawdor; Macbeth recoils at the unwholesome thoughts swirling within him on the prospect of becoming king, and references chance; he seems distracted, but suggests that he and Banquo should talk soon.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe classical Fates were Clotho the spinner, Atropos the \u201cunturning\u201d cutter, Lachesis the \u201callotter\u201d or measurer, daughters all of Zeus and Themis. <a href=\"#_edn3\" id=\"_ednref3\">[3]<\/a> As the ancients saw it, the Fates or Moirai<\/em> possessed a power over events independent even of the gods, who could not control them. This conception of an externally imposed fate is impersonal and irrational; there\u2019s no ultimate meaning to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe witches in Macbeth are in a different category: they don\u2019t possess deterministic power over mortals. The witches claim to know (and really seem to know) that Macbeth will first be Cawdor and then king, while Banquo will father many kings. But they don\u2019t claim the direct power to alter events. This is clear from the way one witch responds to an insult: she says that she will plague the insulter\u2019s husband, but can\u2019t stop his ship from reaching port: \u201cThough his barque cannot be lost, \/ Yet it shall be tempest-tossed\u201d (828, 3.23-24).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe witches, then, do not set a person\u2019s ultimate fate\u2014they have power to suggest and \u201clead on,\u201d and the power to generate circumstances, but not the ultimate power to kill.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNeither do they force Macbeth to do what he subsequently does. He may seem almost hypnotized by the witches, but hypnotism only works because people secretly want to do the things they are supposedly commanded to do. <a href=\"#_edn4\" id=\"_ednref4\">[4]<\/a> That sounds like the correct way to describe the relationship between Macbeth and the witches. They can set forth a vision, but they can\u2019t make Macbeth\u2019s decisions for him. They don\u2019t diminish his \u201cfree will\u201d to kill or not to kill.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerhaps what the witches know most intimately is Macbeth\u2019s character. Their meeting with him isn\u2019t an anonymous call or an accident. They know who he is and prepare to meet him at the end of the \u201churly-burly,\u201d the battle. (920, 1.1.3) They have given Macbeth the apparent certainty that he is to become king, and he will do exactly as he subsequently does. Perhaps the most important thing the witches know is that the measure of ambition in their man outweighs his conscience. He himself evidently does not <\/em>know that\u2014at least not yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat exactly do these \u201cweird sisters\u201d tell Macbeth and Banquo? They \u201chail\u201d Macbeth as \u201cThane of Glamis\u201d (which he is), \u201cThane of Cawdor,\u201d and finally \u201cking hereafter\u201d (920, 1.3.951). Banquo notes that this strange hailing has had a profound effect on his fellow soldier, so that \u201che seems rapt withal\u201d (921, 1.3.58).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBanquo wonders why the witches have not yet said a word to him, and, professing to them that by no means will he \u201cbeg nor fear \/ Your favors nor your hate\u201d (921, 1.3.61-62), still he wants to know the truth about his own future. This is not, perhaps, an entirely convincing boast on Banquo\u2019s part: if he doesn\u2019t care about the future, why is he asking about it at all? It seems that this line of inquiry is a bit slippery of Banquo\u2014at the least, he is as subject to that double-edged human feeling, curiosity, as anyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor Banquo, then, the witches have a less dramatic message than the one they gave Macbeth, but still a startling one: \u201cThou shalt get kings, though thou be none\u201d (921, 1.3.68). It will soon become apparent that the prophecies served up to the two friends will tear them and Scotland apart, for both men are bound to find the dynastic conflict thereby established unsustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth\u2019s mind first turns to the question of provenance: where, from whence, he demands of the witches, does this information come? And just like that, the sisters vanish into the air. Evidently, at least for the present, they have no intention of revealing their sources. But new information soon comes Macbeth and Banquo\u2019s way in the person of Ross, who arrives with the news that Macbeth is now, indeed, to be hailed as Thane of Cawdor since that is Duncan\u2019s will.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBanquo takes Macbeth aside and makes a worrisome statement to him: \u201coftentimes to win us to our harm, \/ The instruments of darkness tell us truths, \/ Win us with honest trifles, to betray\u2019s \/ In deepest consequence\u201d (922, 1.3.125-28). Banquo\u2019s medieval Christian mind puts moral considerations first, which will save him from becoming a second Macbeth: he will never trust the source of a prophecy which would seem to deliver a fate out of alignment with honest effort and achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen Banquo turns to speak to Ross, Macbeth lets us in on his own first reflections: \u201cThis supernatural soliciting \/ Cannot be ill, cannot be good\u201d (922, 1.3.132-33). For him, the witches\u2019 hailings and attached promises set up a moral antinomy of sorts: how can they be either good or <\/em>ill? How both?<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s clear that the prophecies are already having a profound and unsettling effect on Macbeth. He admits that his thoughts have turned to \u201cmurder,\u201d and even though that murder is \u201cyet \u2026 but fantastical\u201d (922, 1.3.141) or imaginary, it disturbs him greatly that he has turned so intuitively and immediately to such horrible imaginings. How can that <\/em>be good?<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, how can being Thane of Cawdor, and then king of Scotland, be bad? <\/em>Banquo might be able to answer this question, but Macbeth\u2019s latent ambition is stronger than Banquo\u2019s, and he cannot presently answer it. The new Thane of Cawdor finds that this strange experience \u201cShakes so my single state of man \/ That function is smothered in surmise, \/ And nothing is but what is not\u201d (922, 1.3.142-44). As the Norton footnote 1 for pg. 922 suggests, this marks the point at which Macbeth\u2019s internal integrity splits in two: he is now both the same honorable man, and a likely traitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAll that Macbeth had formerly taken for granted is now in play, and murderous thoughts coexist uneasily with his hope that \u201cIf chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me \/ Without my stir\u201d (923, 1.3.146-47). For the time being, Macbeth says only to Banquo that both of them should reflect upon what has just happened, and then speak freely to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 4 (923-24, sentence has been passed on the rebel Cawdor; when Macbeth and Banquo arrive, Duncan thanks them effusively; the old King promises blessings to Macbeth and Banquo, but also declares his son Malcolm heir, and says he means to visit Macbeth at Inverness; Macbeth is unsettled by Duncan\u2019s announcement since now, if he would be king, he will need to act rather than rely on fate; Macbeth leaves to prepare his castle for Duncan\u2019s stay.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDuncan is still shocked by the treachery of the now executed Thane of Cawdor, saying, \u201cThere\u2019s no art \/ To find the mind\u2019s construction in the face. \/ He was a gentleman on whom I built \/ An absolute trust\u201d (923, 1.4.11-14). The reverend old king <a href=\"#_edn5\" id=\"_ednref5\">[5]<\/a> is apparently not in possession of the proto-Machiavellian dictum that one should not be quick to trust others since people are seldom inwardly what they appear to be outwardly. <a href=\"#_edn6\" id=\"_ednref6\">[6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nKing Duncan makes Malcolm Prince of Cumberland and heir to the throne, which galls Macbeth, who apparently thought the crown might come to him as decently as the honors he has won up to this point: Malcolm\u2019s preeminence, Macbeth realizes, is \u201ca step \/ On which I must fall down or else o\u2019erleap, \/ For in my way it lies\u201d (924, 4.48-50), and it reinforces the division within him that was already begun by the end of the third scene: now he says, \u201cStars, hide your fires, \/ Let not light see my black and deep desires \u2026\u201d (924, 1.4.50-51).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 5 (924-26, Lady Macbeth reads Macbeth\u2019s letter about his encounter with the witches; she fears that her husband is too kind-hearted to kill for a crown; a messenger informs Lady Macbeth that Duncan is on his way to Inverness, and she prays to whatever spirits \u201ctend on mortal thoughts,\u201d asking them to \u201cunsex\u201d her and fill her with the cruel spirit required for the ruthless work at hand; when Macbeth arrives, Lady Macbeth tells him she will take charge: he should play the innocent host.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nLady Macbeth reads Macbeth\u2019s letter detailing his meeting with the weird sisters, and in reading this communication, her intuition and determination are on full display. Better even than the witches, she is thoroughly familiar not just with her husband\u2019s until recently latent ambitiousness, but also with the fissures in his character: he would have the ill-got gains that he has been promised, but not act dishonorably to get them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth would enjoy the fruits of wickedness, but not practice that wickedness to grow and harvest the fruit in the first place. That is, he has always been a walking contradiction, an embodied antinomy of a man. He is, says his Lady, \u201ctoo full o\u2019th\u2019 milk of human kindness \/ To catch the nearest way\u201d (925, 1.5.15-16). Macbeth does not possess the unholy set <\/em>of vices that need to be aligned if a person is to be effectively, successfully bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut no matter\u2014Lady Macbeth is confident in her ability to deal with this problem, as she sees it. Like a political succubus, <a href=\"#_edn7\" id=\"_ednref7\">[7]<\/a> she will work intimately with her husband to take away his failings and transform him into the perfectly ruthless man she believes he can be. Addressing the absent Macbeth, she says \u201cHie thee hither, \/ That I may pour my spirits in thine ear \/ And chastise with the valor of my tongue \/ All that impedes thee from the golden round \u2026\u201d (925, 1.5.23-26).<\/p>\n\n\n\nLady Macbeth will make sure her husband is \u201cman enough\u201d to strike home and take <\/em>what \u201cfate and metaphysical aid\u201d (925, 1.5.27) appear to have told him is his.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom the very outset, Lady Macbeth calls upon apparently infernal powers for assistance, and prays that she may be stripped of the supposed faults inherent to her gender: \u201cCome, you spirits \/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, \/ And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full \/ Of direst cruelty!\u201d (925, 1.5.38-41)<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn what may be the most chilling speech in all of Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth shows us that she, the woman whom Macbeth calls his \u201cdear- \/ est partner of greatness\u201d (925, 1.5.9-10), is exhilarated at the news of the great change to come. She calls on the heavens to make her as steely and strong as a male warrior, stopping up all portals of sentiment and leaving room and capacity only for necessary action. (925, 1.5.36-52)<\/p>\n\n\n\nLady Macbeth clearly has no doubt that the witches\u2019 prophecy will come true and that it will require a violent assist from her husband, but her role is that of the cunning woman, the plotter and seducer. It\u2019s worth noting that this essentially equal partner of Macbeth cannot have turned overnight into the passionate devotee of such rough action as she now plans: this is who she is, but also, evidently, who she has been all along. Perhaps that ought to make us reflect on how we view the character traits of Macbeth himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEven those who are experiencing Macbeth <\/em>for the first time might also consider that going forward, Lady Macbeth\u2019s prospects for a felicitous ending are not good. As in classical tragedy, when a woman arrogates to herself the attributes of a male hero, she will be destroyed. <a href=\"#_edn8\" id=\"_ednref8\">[8]<\/a> As the play proceeds and Macbeth steps up to become the hardened king his wife had prayed for, she will lose her \u201cunsexed\u201d qualities of the first act, and with them the capacity to steer Macbeth by means of gender-policing taunts and reproaches. But let\u2019s save further commentary on that development for later discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe fifth scene ends with Lady Macbeth already taking charge. When Macbeth arrives home, she gives him wickedly good advice: \u201cLook like th\u2019innocent flower, \/ But be the serpent under\u2019t\u201d (926, 1.5.63-64). All he needs to do for now is play the good host, and leave the arrangements to his very capable partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 6 (926-27, nearing the castle in Inverness, Duncan and Banquo share their appreciation of the place and its environment; Lady Macbeth welcomes the royal party with perfectly feigned graciousness.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDuncan arrives in a fine mood at Macbeth\u2019s castle, praising its location as \u201ca pleasant seat\u201d (926, 1.6.1), and Banquo adds his observation that here, \u201cThe air is delicate\u201d (926, 1.6.10). Truly, Macbeth is \u201cthe man in the high castle.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn9\" id=\"_ednref9\">[9]<\/a> Macbeth and Lady Macbeth exchange perfectly gracious\u2014his genuine, hers feigned\u2014guest-host greetings, and he is gently conducted into the castle. Since Macbeth is indoors, the Lady is playing the role of the \u201cinnocent flower,\u201d as she recommended just a bit earlier to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 7 (927-29, Macbeth ponders the self-destructive nature of vain, ambitious, evil acts such as the killing he now contemplates, and admits what a terrible betrayal of hospitality Duncan\u2019s murder would be and how shocked all Scots would be to hear of it; still, when he tells Lady Macbeth that the plot is off, she quickly brings him round to enthusiastic support for her own wicked plan.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nRuminating on the deed to come, Macbeth fully recognizes the dilemma that he faces: \u201cIf th\u2019assassination \/ Could trammel up the consequence and catch \/ With his surcease success\u2014that but this blow \/ Might be the be-all and the end-all!\u201d (927, 1.7.2-5) If only, that is, killing Duncan could be like catching a prized fish in a net without dredging up other, unwanted things in the act of dragging. <a href=\"#_edn10\" id=\"_ednref10\">[10]<\/a> But of course that is the problem with wicked acts: they inevitably lead to still more wicked acts, lest exposure strip one of ill-got gains or power.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThroughout this medieval-style conversation with his conscience, Macbeth acknowledges the Augustinian point that evil is invariably and profoundly self-destructive, <a href=\"#_edn11\" id=\"_ednref11\">[11]<\/a> and that when a person commits an evil deed, he or she becomes the slave of that deed. As the line from another Shakespeare play, All\u2019s Well That Ends Well,<\/em> runs, \u201che must needs go that the devil drives.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn12\" id=\"_ednref12\">[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAt this point, Macbeth sounds like a Stage Villain 2.0. In other words, he is announcing that he knows how terrible the crime that he means to commit really is. But what at least temporarily saves him from deserving this title of “stage villain” is that he still doesn\u2019t feel certain he should go through with it. His continuing thoughts lead him even farther away from the dreadful act: Duncan, reflects Macbeth, is his feudal lord, his guest, and a good man whose murder would generate untold pity throughout Scotland (927, 7.12-20).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe prospective deed is in all ways damnable, and Macbeth is in no doubt of its source in wicked ambition or the likelihood of retribution: as he says, \u201cwe but teach \/ Bloody instructions which, being taught, return \/ To plague th\u2019inventor\u201d (927 7.8-10) and \u201cI have no spur \/ To prick the sides of my intent, but only \/ Vaulting ambition\u2026\u201d (927, 7.25-27). As Robert Bridges asks, how could someone so horrified by the prospective crime actually commit it?<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Norton editors point out that Macbeth may be Shakespeare\u2019s most self-aware villain. <a href=\"#_edn13\" id=\"_ednref13\">[13]<\/a> Unlike, say, Richard III, whom we can hardly imagine doing other than what he does, Macbeth has the capacity to do good or ill. We know that his choice is sincerely meditated and deeply felt, and he understands the nature of what he\u2019s about to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNonetheless, Lady Macbeth brings Macbeth round to his longstanding code as a warrior: his masculine honor, she convinces him, calls for him to take the crown, not sit back and wait for it to be delivered to him by good fortune. She taunts her husband with stinging reproaches such as, \u201cWhen you durst do it, then you were a man \u2026\u201d (928, 1.7.49).<\/p>\n\n\n\nLady Macbeth has had a child and suckled it, she continues, but all the same, she tells Macbeth, \u201cI would, while it was smiling in my face, \/ Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums \/ And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you \/ Have done to this\u201d (928, 1.7.56-59). It is hard to imagine a more misguided or pitiless conception of what it means to be a man, coming even after Macbeth has protested this line of thinking in his wife. (928, 1.7.45-47)<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, Lady Macbeth\u2019s efforts are successful, and Macbeth is brought round, and gets down to the brass tacks of planning how to carry off the murder they intend.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe basic conflict between Christian sentiment and pagan heroism we find in the revenge play Hamlet<\/em> <a href=\"#_edn14\" id=\"_ednref14\">[14]<\/a> also obtains in the later play Macbeth:<\/em> Macbeth\u2019s bloody Senecan ambition can only be satisfied by violating Christian principle. Faced with competing codes since he will have it so, he must make a moral choice. He has made division within himself, and in consequence must carefully manage the yawning divide between what is and what seems to be: \u201cAway, and mock the time with fairest show; \/ False face must hide what the false heart doth know\u201d (929, 1.7.81-82).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is not much different from the advice his wife gave him earlier. Now Macbeth has made it his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act2\">ACT 2<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 1 (929-31, as a guest at Inverness, Banquo is unsettled since, in his dreams, he has felt the pull of the witches\u2019 promises; Macbeth agrees that they should speak soon; by himself, Macbeth envisions\u2014or actually sees\u2014a blood-smirched dagger that points him toward the sleeping Duncan\u2019s room; he prepares himself by reflecting on the fitness of the midnight hour for such a deed as killing an unsuspecting king; when Lady Macbeth rings the bell to signal that the time is right, Macbeth stalks toward the fatal scene.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile Duncan showers gifts upon Macbeth\u2019s household, Banquo finds it impossible to get to sleep since he is troubled by disordered thoughts, and when he greets Macbeth, he admits to him that, he \u201cdreamt last night of the three weird sisters\u201d and is mindful of the truth that they have brought to Macbeth. (930, 2.1.20-21) Macbeth says that if Banquo will lend his support, it will bring much honor to him. But Banquo remains aloof\u2014he is not convinced that his friend\u2019s offer is itself honorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter this unsatisfying conversation, Macbeth is alone with his thoughts, and they are not wholesome ones: \u201cIs this a dagger which I see before me, \/ The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. \/ I have thee not, and yet I see thee still\u201d (930, 2.1.33-35). He questions the ontological status (i.e., the existence or non-existence) of the dagger as a material object. Might it be rather \u201cA dagger of the mind, a false creation, \/ Proceeding from the heat-oppress\u00e8d brain\u201d (930, 2.1.38-39)?<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere is a third possibility in Shakespeare\u2019s universe\u2014the dagger might be the product of a supernatural visitation, perhaps a trick played by the witches with the aid of their familiar evil spirits in service of the devil. Macbeth\u2019s own doubts, however, would seem to indicate that he is dealing with \u201cA dagger of the mind,\u201d just as he suspects. No matter: the dagger accomplishes its function. As Macbeth says to the thing, \u201cThou marshall\u2019st me the way that I was going\u201d (930, 2.1.42).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe bloody knife concentrates and gathers up Macbeth\u2019s spiritual and bodily forces. Its power may seem to take the cast of fate or necessity, but it seems better to suggest that it makes manifest the weirdness of the world through which Macbeth now walks: even as he goes to commit the murder that will change him forever, the very objects around him seem to speak to him or somehow to move him, tormenting him with animistic pranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat we are most likely witnessing in this scene is not Macbeth still tormenting himself with doubts, but rather more like reaffirmation, a plucking-up of sufficient audacity and steadiness to accomplish the task at hand. By the scene\u2019s end, Macbeth is stalking \u201cWith Tarquin\u2019s ravishing strides\u201d (930, 2.1.55) directly to the chamber where the unsuspecting king lies. The bell rings by prior arrangement with Lady Macbeth, and Macbeth goes to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHe prays for an easy, quiet kill that accords with the silence and deadness of nature itself: \u201cThou sure and firm-set earth, \/ Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear \/ Thy very stones prate of my whereabout \u2026\u201d (930, 2.1.56-58). But we know that such ease when a man is dealing out violent death cannot be. It will always be a horrid, bloody affair. <a href=\"#_edn15\" id=\"_ednref15\">[15]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 2 (931-32, on edge, Lady Macbeth waits for Macbeth to finish his work and return; Macbeth soon returns, overwhelmed with horror at his own actions; he still clutches the knives that he used to kill Duncan, which he was supposed to place next to the servants the couple mean to implicate in the crime; since Macbeth is immobilized with guilt, Lady Macbeth takes the daggers and sets them beside the grooms; she returns to her petrified, \u201cunmanned\u201d husband and tells him to get dressed and wash his blood-soaked hands.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nEach in their own way, both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth show considerable weakness once the murder has been committed. As for Lady Macbeth, she is anxiety-ridden while going through the minutes it takes for the plot to be executed. The cry of an owl seems to startle her, and then she fears that the grooms have regained consciousness and found out Macbeth before he could carry out the murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMost telling of all, however, is the Lady\u2019s admission, \u201cHad he not resembled \/ My father as he slept, I had done\u2019t\u201d (931, 2.2.11-13). She saw the sleeping old Duncan and couldn\u2019t shake from her mind thoughts of filial affection and respect for her own family patriarch. Lady Macbeth is not as thoroughly \u201cunsexed,\u201d it seems, as she desires to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth\u2019s initial reaction to his bloody act is one of horror and disbelief: why didn\u2019t anyone hear anything? (931, 2.2.14) He is shaken, as well, by his inability to say amen in response to the grooms\u2019 sleepy \u201cGod bless us\u201d (931, 2.2.29-31, 34-35), and reports to Lady Macbeth that after stabbing Duncan, \u201cMethought I heard a voice cry, \u2018Sleep no more! \/ Macbeth does murder sleep\u2019\u2026\u201d (932, 2.2.38-39).<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth even suffers from a touch of \u201cLady Macbeth\u2019s Disease,\u201d as that condition later manifests in his wife. <a href=\"#_edn16\" id=\"_ednref16\">[16]<\/a> He asks, \u201cWill all great Neptune\u2019s ocean wash this blood \/ Clean from my hand?\u201d (932, 2.2.63-64) The hand-washing in this scene is both practical, since the evidence must be eliminated, and ritually significant as an act of forgetting, if not of attaining forgiveness. But it gives no relief, which is an ominous sign for Macbeth and his wife, in spite of the latter\u2019s seeming confidence that \u201cA little water clears us of this deed\u201d (932, 2.2.70).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe knocking at the gate \u201cappalls\u201d Macbeth (932, 2.2.61). By now, his sensibilities are both heightened and deranged. Macbeth\u2019s final words in this scene point the way forward: \u201cTo know my deed \u2018twere best not know myself \u201c (932, 2.2.76). Necessary now is the deadening of his own consciousness, and of his conscience, which is yet raw.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut for the moment, Lady Macbeth must grab the daggers from her husband and take care of insinuating the grooms\u2019 guilt for Duncan\u2019s murder. (932, 2.2.55-56) At this point, she plays the role of the \u201cman\u201d to protect both her temporarily incapacitated husband and herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 3 (933-36, a drunken porter, hearing knocking, takes on the persona of a porter guarding hell\u2019s gates; he allows entrance to Macduff and Lennox, whose charge it is to wake Duncan; Macbeth welcomes them; Macduff goes to rouse Duncan, but returns yelling bloody murder; Macbeth and Lennox investigate: Lennox believes the servants are guilty, but Macbeth confesses that he has just slain them; Macduff is incredulous, but Lady Macbeth faints and requires attention; Malcolm and Donalbain realize that they are in danger, and decide to flee Scotland.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Porter hears knocking at the castle\u2019s gates, and for his own amusement, he rehearses the role of a porter at Hell\u2019s gates, generating in the process what may be the world\u2019s first \u201cKnock, knock\u201d jokes. This scene (933, 2.3.1-35) points us toward the true nature of Macbeth\u2019s crimes, and the reason why he is bound to be disappointed in what they bring him by way of a life.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFirst to require consideration are the Porter\u2019s five references to \u201cequivocation\u201d and variants on that word, which the Norton editors explain were topical when the play was written and performed: they were used to refer to Catholic plotters against the life of Queen Elizabeth I. <a href=\"#_edn17\" id=\"_ednref17\">[17]<\/a> To equivocate is a kind of verbal deception: to speak in an ambiguous, slippery way with the intention of deceiving others, avoiding a commitment, etc. <a href=\"#_edn18\" id=\"_ednref18\">[18]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Porter uses the term in a couple of ways: first in relation to one of the imaginary entrants to hell, and secondly in relation to anyone who drinks alcohol: strong drink, he says, plays the equivocator with the drunken man whose sexual desire is aroused, in that it \u201cprovokes the desire \/ but it takes away the performance\u201d (933, 2.3.24-25).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAlthough the connection is one we ourselves, and not the Porter, must make, the witches\u2019 prophecies function in much the same way. Like an intoxicating brew, those promises or prophecies arouse Macbeth\u2019s latent ambition, his desire for advancement. But if we want to arrive at an adequate analogy, what is the equivalent of the \u201cperformance\u201d that this same intoxication supposedly \u201ctakes away\u201d? What are the witches promising in their equivocal way that will not <\/em>be delivered?<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt can\u2019t be simply Macbeth\u2019s taking of the crown by murdering Duncan since, after all, he manages to complete that act without much trouble. No, the \u201cconsummation\u201d or completion of the action given rise by Macbeth\u2019s desire must be security. <\/em>Macbeth, as he will say explicitly later on, does not simply want the crown and the power that goes with it. He wants to enjoy these things in perpetuity, and he wants to be able to pass along that power to an heir that he himself has fathered: generational immortality, as we might call it. <a href=\"#_edn19\" id=\"_ednref19\">[19]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe witches, however, did not <\/em>include any clause in their prophecy that indicated whether Macbeth would be king for three decades, three days, or three minutes\u2014they offered no real glimmer of security, <\/em>and no explanatory codicils were allowed. When Macbeth decides to follow the path made visible for him by the witches\u2019 prophecies, he is doing so without getting the full story about what that path entails for his and Lady Macbeth\u2019s ultimate well-being. In the end, Macbeth will find that even his boldest deeds bestow no freedom, but are merely reactions to a bitter necessity of his own making.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUltimately, then, unrestrained ambition leads to madness, making its indulgers lose free will and self-respect. In that way, Macbeth becomes as impotent as the drunken lecher of the Porter\u2019s imagining, even as he hacks his way through the kingship he has wrongly won.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere is yet another function of the Porter scene, aptly recognized by the Romantic critic Thomas De Quincey. In his essay, \u201cOn the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth,\u201d this author writes that the Porter scene captures the moment when a murderous act beyond civilized existence gives way to the normal, everyday dimension of life. One can\u2019t, after all, live in a perpetual state of monstrous depravity and horror. <a href=\"#_edn20\" id=\"_ednref20\">[20]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s why, De Quincey explains, the Porter scene is so effective, even startling: even as Macbeth is living the internal consequences of his diabolical act, he hears the same knocking at the gates that the comical, everyday Porter hears, and must then return to the quotidian level of life, with its demands on our attention that displace our self-centered internal discourse and force us to confront reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPart of this reality, for Macbeth, involves his need to cover up what he and his wife have done. He seems to pass the \u201cappearance of genuine emotion\u201d test when Macduff returns to inform all present of the horrible, bloody scene he has discovered. But when Macbeth kills the grooms and attributes this act to the righteous fury grounded in his love for the good old king, his performance is not well received.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth attempts to justify his rash action to all present by blurting out, \u201cI do repent me of my fury \/ That I did kill them\u201d (935, 2.3.103-04), but his effort receives only Macduff\u2019s incredulous, pointed question, \u201cWherefore did you so?\u201d (935, 2.3.104) Macbeth\u2019s further effort to rationalize his killing of the grooms seems to do even less for him, and only Lady Macbeth\u2019s fainting spell\u2014a \u201cfortunate fall,\u201d and probably a deliberate one\u2014saves him from still more scrutiny into the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAll in all, the Porter\u2019s brief moment in the spotlight widens the frame beyond the selfish circle of Macbeth and his wicked wife. The Porter couldn\u2019t care less about the goings-on at the castle. He has his own desires, his own problems, his own wisdom. Moreover, his play-acting as Satan\u2019s gatekeeper cuts Macbeth\u2019s role as a monster and grand criminal down to size, so that we may, for a time, see in it a damnably common act of betrayal, fueled by vile ambition and justified by knavish equivocation. <a href=\"#_edn21\" id=\"_ednref21\">[21]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nFinally, Malcolm may be inexperienced, but he\u2019s a good enough budding Machiavellian to figure out that it\u2019s time to head for England. He and his brother Donalbain are \u201cthe usual suspects,\u201d and he knows somebody has a powerful interest in framing the two of them. But Donalbain, who will depart for Ireland, gives the best summation of affairs: \u201cWhere we are, \/ There\u2019s daggers in men\u2019s smiles\u201d (936, 3.136-37).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 4 (936-37, Ross and an elderly man discuss the strange, unnatural things that have been happening in Scotland since Duncan\u2019s murder; Macduff informs them that Duncan\u2019s two sons have been accused of bribing the grooms to assassinate him; he also says Macbeth has been appointed king; Ross departs to attend Macbeth\u2019s coronation at Scone, but Macduff declares that he will instead go home to his castle at Fife.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAn eclipse of the sun occurs, and an old man makes the connection: the eclipse is \u201cunnatural, \/ Even like the deed that\u2019s done\u201d (936, 2.4.10-11). The natural world will signify, it will itself turn weird,<\/em> and have its revenge for the unnatural acts, the wicked artifice, enacted by Macbeth and his wife. The man will struggle with conscience and, at least for a time, will seem to have killed it altogether, along with fear, but in the end he will be destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut that is still to come. For the moment, Macbeth is a great success, and we hear that he has traveled to Scone to be crowned king (937, 3.4.31-32). Ross will go to Scone to see the coronation, but Macduff will return home to his castle at Fife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act3\">ACT 3<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 1 (937-41, Banquo, invited by Macbeth to a feast that evening, suspects the worst about his old colleague, but says he will attend; Macbeth, anxious and mindful of the witches\u2019 prophecy about Banquo\u2019s future as the father of many kings, hires a couple of disgruntled men to kill Banquo and his son Fleance as they return in darkness to Inverness; Macbeth says in soliloquy that his goal is security: \u201cto be safely thus.\u201d)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nBanquo\u2019s ambition appears at the outset of this scene, but only as distrustful speculation about Macbeth: \u201cThou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all \/ As the weird women promised, and I fear \/ Thou play\u2019dst most foully for\u2019t. Yet it was said \/ It should not stand in thy posterity \u2026\u201d (937, 1.1-4). Immediately after these reflections, Banquo finds himself warmly invited to dinner by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. How can he say no?<\/p>\n\n\n\nMeanwhile, in front of the palace gate attend the two men whom Macbeth has already chosen as Banquo and Fleance\u2019s assassins. Alone at last, the new king sums up his goal to himself, \u201cTo be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus\u201d (938, 3.1.48). Even so, his obsession with Banquo seems to go beyond the critical concern just stated: Banquo\u2019s continued existence is simply unbearable to him: if the witches are indeed correct, then, says Macbeth, it\u2019s all for naught: \u201cFor Banquo\u2019s issue have I filed my mind, \/ For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered \u2026\u201d (939, 3.1.65-66).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThough but freshly planted on his throne, Macbeth is already confronting the hollow-man ruin of himself that he will soon become: the witches promised him only \u201ca barren scepter\u201d (939, 3.1.62). At the cost of his soul, the \u201ceternal jewel\u201d (939, 3.1.68) possessed by even the humblest of people, that barren scepter is all he presently has.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs he is ruminating in this unhappy way, in come the hired assassins. Macbeth easily wrenches their thoughts in a bloody direction by insisting that Banquo is somehow responsible for every setback they\u2019ve suffered. The two men proclaim themselves more than desperate enough to undertake whatever Macbeth bids them do, and the bargain is struck. Banquo and Fleance must both die this very night.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe play as a whole deals with the relationship between spiritual error and its material and psychological consequences, and we are already beginning to register a change from the initially pensive Macbeth of the time before the murder of Duncan to \u201cMacbeth 2.0.\u201d This Macbeth is hardened, resolute, ruthless: a man willing to betray and strike down anyone who threatens him. His busy wickedness at present is, it should be noted, the flip side of acedia <\/em>or apathy, a state of being we will find him entering later in the play.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 2 (941-42, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth express their anxieties\u2014it seems that both of them have been shaken by terrible dreams; most of all, Macbeth is obsessed with Banquo\u2019s continued existence; the new king mentions obliquely that something will happen tonight, but will not share the details with his wife.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAs this scene opens, we hear an intimate conversation between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth that brings home both the psychological disturbance and distress caused by what they have done and their determination to quell such effects and govern in untroubled security. Lady Macbeth issues the all but despairing reflection that \u201c\u2019Tis safer to be that which we destroy \/ Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy\u201d (941, 3.2.6-7). At the same time, she apparently feels obliged to buck up Macbeth\u2019s spirits, saying, \u201cThings without all remedy \/ Should be without regard. What\u2019s done is done\u201d (941, 3.2.11-12).<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth\u2019s thoughts betray a similar mixture of self-defeating melancholia with earnest resolutions that better times will come. He says, \u201cBut let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, \/ Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep \/ In the affliction of these terrible dreams \/ That shake us nightly\u201d (941, 3.2.16-19).<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth\u2019s strongest resolution is telling with regard to how far he and his wife have come: until Banquo is dealt with, he says to Lady Macbeth, \u201cwe \/ Must lave our honors in these flattering streams \/ And make our faces vizards to our hearts, \/ Disguising what they are\u201d (941, 3.2.31-34). But in truth, the need to keep up this division between being and seeming will never diminish, and it is what will eventually tear Lady Macbeth apart and alienate Macbeth from everyone around him. Still, there is no alternative if they want to keep the power they have falsely won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s to be done?\u201d asks Lady Macbeth (942, 3.2.43). She seems to suspect that Macbeth will have Banquo killed, but he seems reluctant to admit what he is up to in the most explicit terms. \u201cWhy?\u201d we might ask, since she is already complicit in the worst that Macbeth has done.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, Macbeth would prefer to keep the details to himself, plans that entail the murder of Banquo and Fleance: \u201cCome, seeling night, \/ Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, \/ And with thy bloody and invisible hand \/ Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond \/ Which keeps me pale!\u201d (942, 3.2.45-49). This is a hawking metaphor. <a href=\"#_edn22\" id=\"_ednref22\">[22]<\/a> The rational, humane eye of daytime must be kept shut to open up the terror-laced opportunities of night. One bad deed calls for another: as Macbeth says to his now-startled wife, \u201cThings bad begun make strong themselves by ill\u201d (943, 3.2.54).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs yet, Macbeth doesn\u2019t seem to realize that no security for him or his queen will ever emerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 3 (942-43, an extra man joins Macbeth\u2019s two hired assassins; together, they cut down Banquo and leave his corpse in a ditch with many gashes; Fleance, however, escapes, and the killers go to inform Macbeth of the outcome.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThree assassins kill Banquo right after 943, 3.3.21. Fleance, however, escapes. Ironically, his escape seems to be facilitated by one of the murderers\u2019 decision to put out the torch as he fights with Banquo. The night-spirit that Macbeth invoked as his benefactor has instead allowed Fleance to get away.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 4 (943-46, the banquet commences, and one of the assassins shows up to inform Macbeth about the outcome of their efforts to kill Banquo and Fleance; when Macbeth joins the guests at dinner, Banquo\u2019s ghost is sitting in his place, apparently nodding his \u201cgory locks\u201d in mockery; Macbeth and Lady Macbeth make excuses to distract the guests, but the ghost soon returns; Macbeth stammers at Banquo; finally, Lady Macbeth hustles the guests out of the hall; Macbeth tells his wife that he will again question the witches, and he resolves to win security by whatever further crimes prove necessary: there\u2019s no going back.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThis much-admired \u201cbanquet scene\u201d is the play\u2019s climax, the point of maximum tension. In it, Banquo\u2019s gore-bespattered, wound-covered ghost appears during the feast that Macbeth and his queen are hosting so as to help normalize their reign. This apparition takes his seat in Macbeth\u2019s place of honor only after the First Murderer privately delivers to Macbeth the bad news that while Banquo is indeed dead, Fleance escaped into the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor all the guests understand, though, everything is fine, and civility and graciousness reign at the table. At least they do so until Macbeth declares strangely that the table is full, and there\u2019s no place for him to sit, and moments later he says with horror, \u201cThou canst not say I did it. \/ Never shake thy gory locks at me!\u201d (944, 3.3.50-51) Lady Macbeth is at first shocked like everyone else, and then privately contemptuous of her husband\u2019s outburst, saying, \u201cWhen all\u2019s done, \/ You look but on a stool\u201d (944, 3.3.68-69). But there sits Banquo, nodding his terribly gashed head, probably smiling at the shattered Macbeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth\u2019s guests see only a fit of madness that unmans him. They don\u2019t even know Banquo is dead, only that he\u2019s missing. This scene directly undoes Macbeth\u2019s attempt to play the smooth Machiavel: his behavior unsettles everyone around him, including Lady Macbeth. His strange words pay tribute to the weirdness of the time, and are truly chilling: \u201cThe times has been \/ That, when the brains were out, the man would die, \/ And there an end. But now they rise again \u2026\u201d (945, 3.4.80-82). Macbeth is a haunted man, and a second visitation from the ghost only makes that still more evident.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHow to deal with this dreadful turn of events? Most immediately, Lady Macbeth orders all the guests to make a hasty exit from this catastrophic public relations failure. When Macbeth recovers his wits somewhat, he determines to find out the worst and thereby discover the most brutal and efficient means to maintain his power. He declares, \u201cI will . . . to the weird sisters. \/ More they shall speak, for now I am bent to know \/ By the worst means the worst\u201d (946, 3.4.135-37). There\u2019s no need for Macbeth to hold back since he\u2019s already deep in evil, haunted by the dark forces to which he has succumbed: \u201cI am in blood \/ Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, \/ Returning were as tedious as go o\u2019er\u201d (946, 3.4.138-40). <a href=\"#_edn23\" id=\"_ednref23\">[23]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nHe must now act so quickly that there\u2019s no time to analyze his actions beforehand. As quickly as the mind can conceive, the hand will act (946, 3.4.141-42).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 5 (946-47, in this scene probably written by Thomas Middleton, Hecate, the Queen of the Night, scolds the three witches for neglecting to bring her into their \u201cMacbeth\u201d project, but promises that she will work up a fittingly dreadful ending for the whole affair.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn this scene that many textual scholars believe was written not by Shakespeare but by a collaborator, Thomas Middleton, <a href=\"#_edn24\" id=\"_ednref24\">[24]<\/a> Hecate, Queen of the Night, upbraids the witches for not apprising her of their work with Macbeth. She also has nothing good to say about Macbeth himself. Him, she categorizes as an ordinary mortal, no more than \u201ca wayward son, \/ Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do, \/ Loves for his own ends, not for you\u201d (947, 3.5.11-13). In other words, Macbeth does not do evil for its own sake, but only to achieve his own selfish aims.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHecate mocks human pretensions to permanence and safety, saying, \u201cyou all know security \/ Is mortals\u2019 chiefest enemy (947, 6.5.32-33). As the Norton gloss points out, \u201csecurity\u201d in Hecate\u2019s context means \u201coverconfidence.\u201d It may, however, bear the additional sense of \u201cbeing sure of what you\u2019ve gained.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 6 (947-48, speaking with a Scottish lord, Lennox mocks Macbeth\u2019s \u201cfake news\u201d interpretations of all the violence that has been going on in the country; the Scottish lord tells him that Macduff has gone to England to get military help in taking Macbeth down.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nLennox, in conversation with a Scottish nobleman, repeats in ironic mode the \u201cofficial, state-sponsored versions\u201d of events that Macbeth\u2019s regime has been putting out, and we also hear that Malcolm has found refuge at the court of England\u2019s King Edward the Confessor. Macduff has followed Malcolm there to seek military help from Edward against Macbeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act4\">ACT 4<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 1 (948-52, Macbeth demands that the weird sisters help him; they call up three apparitions: an armed head, a bloody child, and a crowned child holding a tree; these figures tell Macbeth that he must \u201cbeware Macduff,\u201d that \u201cnone of woman born\u201d can hurt him, and that his kingdom will last until \u201cGreat Birnam Wood\u201d comes to Dunsinane; at Macbeth\u2019s at his insistence, there\u2019s one last apparition: a line of eight kings, with Banquo holding a mirror to infinity; the witches vanish and Macbeth curses them; Lennox tells Macbeth that Macduff is off to England, so he determines to slaughter Macduff\u2019s family.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nLike Act 3, Scene 5, this scene seems to have been at least partially written by Thomas Middleton. Macbeth meets for the second time with the weird sisters, determined to know the worst. Three apparitions come in succession, each with its own information to impart.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe first is \u201can armed head\u201d that tells Macbeth to \u201cbeware Macduff.\u201d The second is \u201ca bloody child\u201d that says \u201cnone of woman born\u201d will harm him, and the third, a crowned child holding a tree in his hand, proclaims that only when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill will he be defeated. (950-51, 4.1.70-93) Taken together, these prophecies seem to offer a very strong measure of certitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, Macbeth remains unsatisfied. He demands information about Banquo\u2019s line, and he is presented with a series of eight kings, Banquo being the eighth and holding a magic-mirror image of his issue reigning forever. This vision profoundly unsettles Macbeth, and he exclaims in shock, \u201cWhat, will the line stretch out to th\u2019 crack of doom?\u201d (951, 4.1.116) Macbeth considers his own life safe, but he is frustrated since, for him, as with most monarchs, perpetuity is the ultimate emblem of success.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth will do anything to secure his throne, perpetual or not, so he resolves from this time onward to perform his bloody deeds as soon as they are conceived. As he puts it, \u201cFrom this moment \/ The very firstlings of my heart shall be \/ The firstlings of my hand \u2026 \/ The castle of Macduff I will surprise \u2026\u201d (952, 4.2.143-147, 149). Macduff\u2019s family is to be slaughtered. There is no time for further reflection, and certainly no occasion for pity.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 2 (952-54, Ross travels to Macduff\u2019s estate and defends Macduff\u2019s hasty departure for England, but now Macduff\u2019s family is completely helpless to avert the disaster coming their way; a messenger comes to tell Lady Macduff she must flee, but it\u2019s too late: Macbeth\u2019s thugs arrive and ruthlessly kill the Lady and her little son.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nRoss comes to the castle at Fife where Macduff has left his family. This loyal friend tries to justify Macduff\u2019s decision to leave the family alone while he goes to seek military assistance against Macbeth, but it\u2019s hard going. Lady Macduff\u2019s words to her son suggest that she fears her husband is already dead. Ross stays only a short time, and departs.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBefore they are cruelly murdered, Lady Macduff and her son give us yet another perspective on the great events that overtake them and afflict the kingdom of Scotland: the boy\u2019s innocence strikes home when he says in response to Lady Macduff\u2019s insistence that traitors must be hanged, \u201cthe liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and \/ swearers enough to beat the honest men and hang up them\u201d (953, 4.2.54-55).<\/p>\n\n\n\nSoon thereafter, a frightened messenger arrives and begs Lady Macduff to leave the castle at once. But it is too late\u2014Macbeth\u2019s thugs burst in, immediately stab the child and set after the Lady to kill her as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn this scene, we hear and see the private consequences of public disorder. Before the murderers break in, though, we also see an emphasis on the natural affective ties that bind people and reinforce charity and social order: both Ross and the lower-class messenger show more concern for Lady Macduff and her family than anyone shows for anyone else in the play. This is a degree of humanity that both Macbeth and his queen have scorned.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy, finally, did Macduff leave the family unprotected? To us, he may seem culpable in this since he puts affairs of state before his family\u2019s safety. But it\u2019s fair to say that Macduff, like so many good characters in Shakespeare, probably couldn\u2019t imagine the depths of depravity to which a wretch like Macbeth could sink. Unfortunately, wickedness tends to outpace goodness, and what some people can scarcely conjure in a nightmare, others readily do without conscience or remorse.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 3 (954-60, Macduff meets with Malcolm in England and encourages him to attack Macbeth; fearing that Macduff may be acting on Macbeth\u2019s behalf, Malcolm tests him by boasting of his own alleged wickedness; Macduff passes the test, so Malcolm informs him that the King Edward of England has supplied 10,000 troops, to be led by Old Siward, to invade Scotland; Just then, Ross arrives and tells Macduff that his entire family has been cut down; Malcolm tactlessly urges Macduff to anger, but Macduff protests that he must allow himself to feel the shock; in the end, he declares himself ready for vengeance.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen Macduff arrives in England, the Scottish heir apparent Malcolm laments Scotland\u2019s downfall and voices his skepticism as to whether Macduff\u2019s intentions are honorable or treasonous. Macduff forcibly repels this suspicion, but Malcolm is determined to test him by a rather strange method. He mock-confesses to Macduff what an awful villain he himself is\u2014next to him, he says, the traitor Macbeth is \u201cas pure as snow\u201d (955, 4.3.53). Macduff\u2019s answers to Malcolm\u2019s protestations of debauchery and corruption are almost amusing, and they reduce neatly to an admission that no one expects kings to behave themselves anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut this claim is issued only to test Macduff\u2019s moral steadfastness, and it is his final expression of disgust with the sum of vices that convinces Malcolm he\u2019s on the level: \u201cThese evils thou repeat\u2019st upon thyself \/ Hath banished me from Scotland. \u2013 O my breast, \/ Thy hope ends here\u201d (957, 4.3.112-14).<\/p>\n\n\n\nMalcolm\u2019s ploy underscores the crime Macbeth committed in moving from thought to act, and ultimately his interaction with Macduff reassures us that while all human nature is corrupted, the corruption\u2019s effects can be kept in check.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth\u2019s \u201cthrone of blood\u201d <a href=\"#_edn25\" id=\"_ednref25\">[25]<\/a> need not become the universal, irresistible pattern of royal conduct, even though we saw in the previous scene what happens to the innocent when nobility does not resist: derangement and denaturation of the very landscape and destruction of life and property, as is well indicated by Ross when he says that in Scotland, \u201cgood men\u2019s lives \/ Expire before the flowers in their caps, \/ Dying or ere they sicken\u201d (958, 4.3.171-73).<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacduff is relieved to hear that Malcolm was only testing him, and there is much helpful news thanks to the help coming miserable Scotland\u2019s way from England\u2019s Edward the Confessor, whose praises the three Scotsmen have just been singing. Ten thousand troops are Edward\u2019s contribution to the Scottish effort to rid the nation of its tyrant.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe end of the third scene is nearly unbearable in its concentration on Macduff\u2019s grief over the news that Ross brings. After having dissembled about the matter, he informs the man that his wife and children (note the plural\u2014the other kids aren\u2019t present in Act 4, Scene 2) have been cruelly slain by Macbeth\u2019s agents. Macduff is stunned, and Malcolm\u2019s inexperience shows when he immediately tries to harness Macduff\u2019s grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis future king sounds like a young man filled with valorous words from some classical manual of rhetoric. As Macduff says of the putter-forth of this untimely effort, \u201cHe has no children\u201d (959, 4.2.216); i.e., he can\u2019t feel the loss of children as must a grown man who has them. Macduff, unlike Macbeth, is still human, and does not subscribe to the \u201chardness\u201d doctrine of masculinity set forth by the usurping royal couple. Nature\u2019s bonds of affection are still powerful within him, and Macduff, ever the warrior, soon comes round to Malcolm\u2019s program of action: revenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act5\">ACT 5<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 1 (960-61, Lady Macbeth has been walking, talking, and even writing in her sleep; a gentlewoman and a doctor watch Lady Macbeth, who continually rubs her hands as if trying to wash them clean, and exclaims with horror that the rubbing doesn\u2019t work; the doctor\u2019s diagnosis is that she needs the help of a priest, not a medical practitioner.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nBy now, Lady Macbeth has been driven mad by her guilt, and has obsessive-compulsive disorder, in this case a hand-washing compulsion. As a gentlewoman assistant and a doctor listen in on her disordered night-thoughts, the Queen asks nobody in particular, \u201cwho would have \/ thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?\u201d (960, 5.1.34-35) Lady Macbeth\u2019s physical manifestation of hand-washing reveals a psychic derangement: she can\u2019t expunge her guilt, which shows up as imaginary blood stains on her hands, and her physician can do nothing to help her.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter hearing the Lady\u2019s final utterance of the night, which is, \u201cI tell you yet again Banquo\u2019s buried; he \/ cannot come out on\u2019s grave\u201d (961, 5.1.56-57), the doctor admits his frustration even as he gives his diagnosis, saying, \u201cMore needs she the divine than the physician\u201d (961, 5.1.67). But this is something only to think in the tyranny where he resides, not something to speak out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is the point of showing Lady Macbeth\u2019s insanity, a psychological problem, when the supernatural agents who set the stage for disaster seem real enough? Macbeth <\/em>is not a pure psychodrama, but the witches are not causes of human evil. They only assist those who would deal in wickedness.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat affects Lady Macbeth in the private sphere and in purely mental terms plays out for Macbeth in the broader public sphere that belongs to him as king. Action, battles and machinations constitute his attempt to scrub his hands and conscience clean, but violence and betrayal accomplish no such thing. Vain repetition rules the day: wedded to his illegitimate power, Macbeth will repeat the same pattern to the bitter, desperate end.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 2 (961-62, Macbeth\u2019s Scottish opponents go toward Birnam Wood to combine with Malcolm, Siward and their 10,000 English fighters; Menteith and Caithness discuss what they suppose Macbeth is doing and feeling now that his opponents are closing in.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMenteith, Caithness, Lennox and Angus head for Birnam Wood, where they expect to combine with the English-lent forces led by Malcolm, Siward, and Macduff. Meanwhile, they say, Macbeth is busy fortifying Dunsinane Castle and commanding the troops that have not already revolted from him. Angus offers a memorable image of Macbeth\u2019s present shrunken condition: \u201cNow does he feel his title \/ Hang loose about him, like a giant\u2019s robe \/ Upon a dwarfish thief\u201d (962, 5.2.20-22).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 3 (962-64, Macbeth has apparently received ominous dispatches about the pair of forces coming to destroy him, but still trusts the promises made to him by the witches\u2019 apparitions; he abuses his servant Seyton for affirming the bad news, and reflects that he has reduced himself to the sad life he now lives; Macbeth asks searching questions of the now deranged Lady Macbeth\u2019s physician, but he knows what really ails her.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth\u2019s opponents are on the march towards Birnam, but he has deluded himself by now\u2014he had earlier denounced the witches for the visions afforded him\u2014and thinks he still leads a charmed life thanks to the promises supposedly tendered by the three apparitions, so he dismisses those who are abandoning him: \u201cThen fly, false thanes, \/ and mingle with the English epicures!\u201d (962, 5.3.7-8) What should he fear? As he says, \u201cTill Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane \/ I cannot taint with fear\u201d (962, 5.3.2-3).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut Macbeth\u2019s claims ring hollow, as he himself reveals even in summoning his servant Seyton: <a href=\"#_edn26\" id=\"_ednref26\">[26]<\/a> \u201cI have lived long enough. \/ My way of life \/ Is fall\u2019n into the sere, the yellow leaf, \/ And that which should accompany old age, \/ As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, \/ I must not look to have\u2026\u201d (963, 5.3.22-26). The words are aesthetically impressive, but hollow and not directly related to the realm of action. This man is tired of living, and would as soon get it over with. The crown he stole is no longer worth the trouble it takes to maintain.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, Macbeth resolves to steel himself in violence, saying, \u201cI\u2019ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked\u201d (963, 5.3.33). This is determination that stems from despair, one almost wants to say apathy, though that is probably not quite right.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn any case, Macbeth also remains distant from his wife\u2019s sufferings. He asks the doctor in a philosophical moment, \u201cCanst thou not minister to a mind diseased?\u201d Can\u2019t the learned doctor \u201cPluck from the memory a rooted sorrow\u201d and \u201cRaze out the written troubles of the brain \u2026\u201d (963, 5.3.40-42)? When the doctor answers that he can\u2019t, Macbeth rejects \u201cphysic\u201d altogether. What good is doctoring if it can only heal physical maladies, and not the disorders and injuries to which the mind is subject?<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for his own situation, Macbeth still thinks the witches\u2019 charms are better than any medicine. He repeats what he had said at the scene\u2019s beginning: \u201cI will not be afraid of death and bane \/ Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane\u201d (964, 5.3.59-60). The doctor would rather be anywhere than Dunsinane Castle. As he says, \u201cProfit again should hardly draw me here\u201d (964, 5.3.62). Being a doctor to the stars pays well, it seems, but it has its pitfalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 4 (964, with the Scottish and English forces now combined at Birnam Wood, Malcolm tells his men each to cut off a branch from the forest\u2019s trees so as to prevent Macbeth from making an accurate assessment of their strength.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Birnam Wood, Malcolm orders each of his soldiers to cut down a tree bough (964, 5.4.4-7) and use it to deceive Macbeth\u2019s defenders about the advancing host\u2019s numbers. So Birnam Wood is<\/em> coming to Dunsinane, even though we and Macbeth are not witnessing a violation of the laws of nature, as the witches\u2019 phrasing allowed us to believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 5 (964-65, Macbeth expresses confidence in his castle\u2019s strength as Malcolm, Siward, and their combined forces come on; Lady Macbeth dies, and Macbeth responds in a despairing, if poetical, way: life, he says, is \u201ca tale \/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, \/ Signifying nothing\u201d; a messenger reports that Birnam Wood is, in a strange sense, coming to Dunsinane; Macbeth decides to leave the castle and fight Malcolm out in the open.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth is convinced that he is beyond the reach of the troops massed against him: \u201cOur castle\u2019s strength \/ Will laugh a siege to scorn\u201d (964, 5.4.2-3). But even he is not fully prepared for the news that Seyton brings next. The wailing of women that strikes Macbeth\u2019s ears does not shake him, for as he says, \u201cI have almost forgot the taste of fears\u201d (965, 5.4.9). But the announcement of Lady Macbeth\u2019s miserable descent into oblivion leads him to a startlingly nihilistic place. \u201cShe should have died hereafter,\u201d he says ambiguously (965, 5.5.17).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs the Norton footnote 1 for this line suggests, this utterance could either mean, \u201cshe would have died sometime anyway,\u201d or it could mean, \u201cit\u2019s a pity that she didn\u2019t die in better circumstances than these.\u201d The rest of the passage would seem to favor the first meaning since in it Macbeth speaks what may be his most haunting lines in the play, culminating in the soul-crushing description of life as \u201ca tale \/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, \/ Signifying nothing\u201d (965, 5.4.26-28).<\/p>\n\n\n\nSoon, a messenger sparks Macbeth\u2019s wrath by informing him about what appears to be a moving forest. First he threatens the messenger, and then openly invites general decreation and destruction: \u201cI \u2018gin to be aweary of the sun, \/ and wish th\u2019estate o\u2019th\u2019 world were now undone\u201d (965, 5.5.49-50). He will fight all the same, but these beautiful words he speaks are also the most hollowed-out husks of language he has yet spoken. Language, too, has failed Macbeth\u2014he can still speak with eloquence that moves us, <\/em>but surely such eloquence can do nothing for him but deepen his weariness of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd so Birnam Wood is indeed come to High Dunsinane. Finally, Macbeth admits that he has lost his certitude, his \u201csecurity\u201d in the sense that Hecate lent that word in Act 4, Scene 1. <a href=\"#_edn27\" id=\"_ednref27\">[27]<\/a> He gives a final command: \u201cArm, arm, and out!\u201d (965, 5.5.46) He will leave the now illusory safety of his high castle and go to fight Macduff, Malcolm and the rest of his enemies in the open field.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNature, here represented by \u201cBirnam Wood,\u201d must by now seem quite bizarre and uncanny to Macbeth because he himself has become unnatural, even monstrous. This apparent weirdness in the behavior of nature serves as a way of punishing him: he has betrayed his natural lord, Duncan (his \u201cfather\u201d in Jacobean political theory) <a href=\"#_edn28\" id=\"_ednref28\">[28]<\/a> and turned his marriage bond into a criminal partnership to the ruination of Scotland.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn broad terms, the deployment of natural objects to pay Macbeth back stems from the fact that Shakespeare is working within a Christian framework where sin has deranged the entire Creation, just as it will later in Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost:<\/em> Eve \u201cpluck\u2019d, she eat, \/ Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat \/ Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe, \/ That all was lost.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn29\" id=\"_ednref29\">[29]<\/a> Nature responds as by sympathetic magic to human error, reflecting that error back to us if we know how to interpret nature\u2019s signs.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe weird,<\/em> or the uncanny, is in this context a function of Providence, which makes use of whatever is at hand to punish transgressors.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 6 (965, Malcolm and Siward arrive in front of Dunsinane castle, and briefly review their battle plan.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMalcolm orders the men to cast down their tree boughs hewn from Birnam Wood. There\u2019s no need of deception anymore\u2014the time has come to fight. Siward and his son will lead the first wave of battle, and Malcolm and Macduff will do whatever else needs doing. Siward trusts in his military might to arbitrate the quarrel between the righteous invaders and the treasonous king: \u201cDo we but find the tyrant\u2019s power tonight, \/ Let us be beaten if we cannot fight\u201d (966, 5.6.7-8).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 7 (965-69, Macbeth kills young Siward; Macduff enters; Malcolm has accepted the surrender of Dunsinane castle, and some of Macbeth\u2019s forces are deserting or standing down; Macduff locates Macbeth and tells him he was not \u201cof woman born\u201d directly but by a Caesarean procedure; Macbeth\u2019s spirits flag, but he fights and is slain; Ross informs Siward of his son\u2019s death, and the elder disdains to mourn; Macduff presents Malcolm with Macbeth\u2019s severed head and greets him as King; Malcolm bestows titles , calls home loyal exiles home, and brings to trial Macbeth\u2019s partisans; Malcolm invites his friends to see him officially invested as king at Scone.)<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAs the battle begins, Macbeth confidently kills young Siward, and rejects classical honor-suicide, choosing to direct violence at others instead. But then, to his consternation since he already feels guilt over the killing of the man\u2019s family, he is confronted by Macduff, who reveals that he was born by caesarean section, saying, \u201cMacduff was from his mother\u2019s womb \/ Untimely ripped\u201d (967, 5.7.45-46).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis new information causes Macbeth to lose his courage and momentarily drop his adamantine front, but he quickly recovers with curses against the witches on his lips: \u201dbe these juggling fiends no more believed, \/ That palter with us in a double sense, \/ That keep the word of promise to our ear \/ And break it to our hope\u201d (967, 5.7.49-52). In other words, back to hell with such equivocators.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nShorn of the allegedly supernatural strength of the witches\u2019 prophecies, Macbeth can do nothing but fight to the last. He will not surrender, and is duly slain by the resolute avenger Macduff. In the end, the terms Macduff and others use to describe him strip him of humanity: a baited bear, and a hell-hound. Lady Macbeth, too, is described by Malcolm as \u201cfiend-like\u201d (968, 5.7.99). Macduff has sworn revenge against this monstrous sinner, and he gets it.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom the time of their first terrible deed onward, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth tried to kill all sentiment within themselves, and it seems fitting that the end of the play isn\u2019t at all sentimental. Siward rejects the license of mourning over his son in battle, saying only, \u201cHad I as many sons as I have hairs, \/ I would not wish them to a fairer death\u201d (968, 5.7.78-79).<\/p>\n\n\n\nMalcolm, in accepting the crown, promises to perform all the necessaries in the proper, decorous way. The kingdom has been set right, and the emphasis is on order and ceremony, spare and fitting words coming in advance. This seems appropriate given the derangement of the kingdom and of the dead rulers\u2019 psyches. A return to legitimate order must seem just short of paradise by now.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFinally, we might concentrate on Macbeth\u2019s musings and resolutions in the last several scenes. Do they constitute a classical recognition scene or not? Coleridge says the play is \u201cpure tragedy\u201d <a href=\"#_edn30\" id=\"_ednref30\">[30]<\/a> rather than \u201creflective\u201d as Hamlet.<\/em> But surely there is no lack of introspection or understanding coming from Macbeth. His tragedy involves the process of desiring honors and attaining them by unjust means, of buying into the epistemological and moral ambiguity proffered by the weird sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDoes Macbeth learn anything by the play\u2019s end? He understands what he has done and why it was wrong, but it doesn\u2019t matter to him anymore. His life has become meaningless. This play shows its great maturity in the quality of Macbeth\u2019s final musings: the language accorded the isolated, brittle king is some of the finest Shakespeare ever gave to any character. Its mixture of wonderful aesthetic quality and utter hollowness of spirit shows an intellect undebased, but constrained now to describing and coming to terms with a situation that would horrify anyone with normal sensibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth\u2019s fine words are insightful, but they are hollow, as if he himself can\u2019t feel them and finds no comfort in them. They are empty words, not a curative and certainly no better than the \u201cphysic\u201d he had earlier cast to the dogs because the doctor couldn\u2019t heal his wife\u2019s spiritual disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs so often in Shakespeare, great interest is taken in the way a key character handles the relationship between actions and words: the words spoken by Macbeth to explain his situation to himself and his actions to others provide no relief, for that is beyond the power of language in such cases, at least when it is not accompanied by sincere sentiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nShakespeare\u2019s plays have various ways of dealing with the consequences of tragic mistakes, with respect to the ability to act. King Lear, for example, gains insight at the expense of being able to wield power. By the end of the play, he and his daughter Cordelia are at the mercy of their enemies, so even if they have become \u201cGod\u2019s spies,\u201d they can\u2019t act in the political realm anymore. <a href=\"#_edn31\" id=\"_ednref31\">[31]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth follows a different pattern\u2014once he makes his choice, he must take on the ruthlessness of the tyrant who holds his throne by injustice. Crime follows crime, as Macbeth says, until there\u2019s no point in going back. He acts boldly and dies fighting, but such desperation hardly makes him a hero. Instead, he\u2019s the puppet of actions that stem from his own perverted will.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe witches shoot an arrow into the heart of Macbeth, but that is not to say they are ultimately responsible for his crimes. Ambition is a kind of madness, but it is a lucid madness: <a href=\"#_edn32\" id=\"_ednref32\">[32]<\/a> images present themselves to Macbeth, truth comes as presentiment, and ambition drives him to inhabit the vision. The consequences of his behavior are predictable, if strange. Shakespeare\u2019s genius is to take what might have been a stage villain and make him a three-dimensional character, but a three-dimensional character who is nonetheless a stunning failure as a human being.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for the play\u2019s politics, it\u2019s difficult to see how some critics\u2019 claims that Macbeth<\/em> is tinged with nihilism can be correct, given that the play was in part written for King James I. Why would Shakespeare deal with kingship in such a manner when he wanted an absolutist monarch to enjoy the play?<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe older, and more tenable, view of Macbeth\u2019s <\/em>moral dimension is that sin punishes itself inexorably, even if the interval between commission and punishment is sometimes very long. It is fair to suggest that anarchy shadows this play, but only in a narrow manner\u2014the sovereign is human, even though political doctrine says he has two bodies, one mortal and the other immortal and representative of kingship itself. <a href=\"#_edn33\" id=\"_ednref33\">[33]<\/a> Macbeth makes a bad but entirely free choice, and from that point onward his choice entraps him in a fate that generates chaos for others who must abide in his realm.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMacbeth himself marches in linear fashion to his death, behaves like a beast (losing his title to humanity), and dies fighting. The Christian point is that free will, misused, becomes the slave of so-called fate, or necessity. This is a basic point made by Saint Augustine in his Enchiridion <\/em>and other works. <a href=\"#_edn34\" id=\"_ednref34\">[34]<\/a> Or as Oscar Wilde said in a more generalized context, when we act we become puppets. <a href=\"#_edn35\" id=\"_ednref35\">[35]<\/a> Shakespeare might add, \u201cOnly when we act badly.\u201d Apparent disorder on the ground need not imply disorder in the heavens, or chaos in the nature of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, we may do well to take the point made by Norton editor Stephen Greenblatt in his introduction to Macbeth <\/em>about the strangeness and equivocal quality of the play\u2019s supernatural realm. It seems accurate to suggest, as Greenblatt does, that the secular and the demonic, the physical-material and the spiritual, are by no means easy to keep strictly separate. The witches\u2019 \u201cequivocation\u201d is a power stalking human desire and endeavor. We might even say that it receives a strong assist from the inherent ambiguity of language itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEdition.<\/strong>\u00a0Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors.\u00a0The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies + Digital Edition.<\/em>\u00a03rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93860-9.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2012, revised 2024 Alfred J. Drake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDocument Timestamp: 11\/18\/2025 8:32 AM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"endnotes\">ENDNOTES<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref1\" id=\"_edn1\">[1]<\/a> Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/25585\/pg25585-images.html#toc75\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Macbeth <\/em>in Lectures on Shakespeare.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref2\" id=\"_edn2\">[2]<\/a> See Norton editor Stephen Greenblatt\u2019s excellent introduction to Macbeth, <\/em>910. The entire introduction spans from 905-13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref3\" id=\"_edn3\">[3]<\/a> See the entry \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theoi.com\/Daimon\/Moirai.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Moirai<\/a>.\u201d Theoi.com. Accessed 8\/5\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref4\" id=\"_edn4\">[4]<\/a> See \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/psychcentral.com\/health\/not-getting-sleepy-not-everyone-can-be-hypnotized#why-doesnt-it-work\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Common Reasons Why Everyone Can\u2019t be Hypnotized<\/a>.\u201d PsychCentral.com Accessed 8\/5\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref5\" id=\"_edn5\">[5]<\/a> Shakespeare departs here from his source material, Holinshed\u2019s Chronicles \u2026, <\/em>in making Duncan a reverend white-haired king, whereas in Holinshed,<\/em> he is a rather weak, young king. The superiority of Shakespeare\u2019s presentation for dramatic purposes is obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref6\" id=\"_edn6\">[6]<\/a> Machiavelli, Niccol\u00f2. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/1232\/pg1232-images.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Prince<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 05\/08\/2024. As a general precept, Machiavelli tells his Medici audience that a prince should cultivate a number of virtues outwardly, but he must not suppose they are always to be observed; that would, in fact, be dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref7\" id=\"_edn7\">[7]<\/a> See the entry <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Succubus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Succubus<\/a>. Wikipedia. Accessed 8\/5\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref8\" id=\"_edn8\">[8]<\/a> See Aeschylus. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/8604\/pg8604-images.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Oresteia<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8\/5\/2024. Clytemnestra, Agamemnon\u2019s wife, and her lover Aegisthus kill King Agamemnon when he returns home from the War in Troy; Prince Orestes subsequently cuts his mother down for her audacious killing of the king.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref9\" id=\"_edn9\">[9]<\/a> The reference is to Philip K. Dick\u2019s 1962 science fiction novel, The Man in the High Castle.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref10\" id=\"_edn10\">[10]<\/a> Following the Norton editors\u2019 gloss of the famous lines as a fishing metaphor, footnote 1, 927.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref11\" id=\"_edn11\">[11]<\/a> Augustine of Hippo. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tertullian.org\/fathers\/augustine_enchiridion_02_trans.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Enchiridion: On Faith, Hope, and Love<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> See Ch. IV, The Problem of Evil, which provides a useful summary. Trans. Albert C. Outler, 1955. Accessed 2\/29\/2024. See also Augustine\u2019s The City of God, <\/em>Vol. 1, Book Twelve. Trans. and ed. Marcus Dods. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/45304\/pg45304-images.html#Page_481\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gutenberg e-text<\/a>. Accessed 2\/29\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref12\" id=\"_edn12\">[12]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. All\u2019s Well That Ends Well.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 971-1033. Lavache says to the Countess, \u201che must needs go that the devil drives\u201d (978, 1.3.24-25). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref13\" id=\"_edn13\">[13]<\/a> On Macbeth\u2019s agonizing self-awareness, see Norton editor Stephen Greenblatt\u2019s excellent introduction to Macbeth, <\/em>906. The entire introduction spans pp. 905-13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref14\" id=\"_edn14\">[14]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. <\/em>Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref15\" id=\"_edn15\">[15]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 288-343. See 304, 2.1.173-74, where Brutus says to his fellow conspirators, \u201cLet\u2019s carve him as a dish fit for the gods, \/ Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref16\" id=\"_edn16\">[16]<\/a> In modern clinical psychiatry, this condition is usually called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.brainsway.com\/knowledge-center\/contamination-ocd\/#:~:text=Contamination%20OCD%20is%20a%20subtype,%2C%20cleaning%2C%20and%20sterilizing%20behavior.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Contamination OCD<\/a>.\u201d (Brainsway.com, accessed 8\/5\/2024.) It\u2019s telling that this condition does not permanently overwhelm Macbeth\u2019s consciousness, but it does so in Lady Macbeth\u2019s case: she proves not to be strong enough to take on the \u201cmale\u201d role in this tragic drama (as she defines it, not as it is or should be) and survive the terrible stress that goes with the role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref17\" id=\"_edn17\">[17]<\/a> See Norton footnote 3 for pg. 933 concerning the significance of the term \u201cequivocation\u201d for the nearly disastrous Gunpowder Plot against King James I. See also \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakespearesglobe.com\/discover\/blogs-and-features\/2014\/11\/05\/the-gunpowder-plot-and-shakespeares-macbeth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Gunpowder Plot and Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth<\/em><\/a>.\u201d RSC website shakespearesglobe.com. Accessed 8\/7\/2024. The \u201cequivocator\u201d that the porter in Macbeth <\/em>refers to is Henry Garnet, who heard Robert Catesby\u2019s confession and learned that he knew about the planned Gunpowder Plot of 1605 to blow up King James I and Parliament. Garnet at first denied knowing anything about the plot, and later claimed his concealment of information was done for the benefit of God. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref18\" id=\"_edn18\">[18]<\/a> See Wiktionary\u2019s definition of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/equivocation#:~:text=The%20use%20of%20expressions%20susceptible,with%20the%20aim%20of%20misleading.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">equivocation<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 8\/6\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref19\" id=\"_edn19\">[19]<\/a> \u201cTo be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus,\u201d says Macbeth. (938, 3.1.48)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref20\" id=\"_edn20\">[20]<\/a> See De Quincey, Thomas. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakespeare-online.com\/plays\/macbeth\/knockingatgate.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth<\/em><\/a>.\u201d Shakespeare-online.com. Accessed 8\/6\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref21\" id=\"_edn21\">[21]<\/a> Shakespeare carries us along with Macbeth\u2019s story, but he won\u2019t let us merge our identity with the protagonist\u2019s identity. We don\u2019t hear a claim like that of Satan in Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost<\/em> (\u201cthe mind is its own place\u201d), but something more like John Donne\u2019s statement, \u201cNo man is an island, entire unto itself.\u201d Shakespeare is interested to show how people respond to one another, not just how they behave without reference to others\u2019 perceptions, needs, and desires. See Milton, John. <a href=\"https:\/\/milton.host.dartmouth.edu\/reading_room\/pl\/book_1\/text.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Paradise Lost<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Book 1.254-55. Milton Reading Room. Accessed 8\/5\/2024. See also Donne, John. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/23772\/23772-h\/23772-h.htm#Page_107\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Meditation 17<\/a>.\u201d in Devotions.<\/em> Project Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8\/26\/2025. Another edition of Donne’s text is \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.luminarium.org\/sevenlit\/donne\/meditation17.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Meditation 17<\/a>.\u201d in Devotions. <\/em>Luminarium e-text. Accessed 8\/26\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref22\" id=\"_edn22\">[22]<\/a> Norton 942, footnote 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref23\" id=\"_edn23\">[23]<\/a> Macbeth\u2019s words may remind us of Richard III\u2019s resolution, \u201cI am in \/ So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin. \/ Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye\u201d (4.2.64\u201367). It would be tiresome to Macbeth to retrace his steps, to be penitent; the only way is forward, wading through more blood. But that way forward may also now begin to seem tedious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref24\" id=\"_edn24\">[24]<\/a> See the Norton Textual Introduction note, 915.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref25\" id=\"_edn25\">[25]<\/a> The title of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa\u2019s famous film adaptation of Macbeth<\/em> in a Samurai setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref26\" id=\"_edn26\">[26]<\/a> The name \u201cSeyton\u201d is no doubt, for comic effect, pronounced as \u201cSatan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref27\" id=\"_edn27\">[27]<\/a> The sense, that is, of \u201coverconfidence.\u201d See the Norton marginal gloss for \u201csecurity\u201d on 947.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref28\" id=\"_edn28\">[28]<\/a> See King James I\u2019s treatises <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo2\/A04230.0001.001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Basilikon Doron<\/em><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo2\/A78586.0001.001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The True Law of Free Monarchy<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>EEBO U-Mich. Accessed 8\/7\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref29\" id=\"_edn29\">[29]<\/a> See Milton, John. <a href=\"https:\/\/milton.host.dartmouth.edu\/reading_room\/pl\/book_9\/text.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Paradise Lost<\/em> 9.781-84<\/a>. The Milton Reading Room. Accessed 8\/7\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref30\" id=\"_edn30\">[30]<\/a> Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/25585\/pg25585-images.html#toc75\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Macbeth <\/em>in Lectures on Shakespeare.<\/em><\/a> Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8\/7\/2024. Coleridge writes, \u201cthere is an entire absence of comedy, nay, even of irony and philosophic contemplation in Macbeth<\/em>,\u2014the play being wholly and purely tragic.\u201d This seems like a bit of an overstatement: what of the \u201cdrunken porter\u201d scene? Or naming Macbeth\u2019s servant, \u201cSeyton\u201d? And what about Macbeth\u2019s thoughts in Act 5 concerning the meaning of life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref31\" id=\"_edn31\">[31]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. King Lear.<\/em> Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840. See 832, 5.3.3-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref32\" id=\"_edn32\">[32]<\/a> The French term is folie lucide, <\/em>sometimes translated as \u201cmoral insanity.\u201d See \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.intechopen.com\/chapters\/55655\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">From Moral Insanity to Psychopathy<\/a>.\u201d Intechopen.com. Accessed 8\/7\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref33\" id=\"_edn33\">[33]<\/a> Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King\u2019s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. <\/em>Princeton UP, 2016. Orig. published in 1957.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref34\" id=\"_edn34\">[34]<\/a> Augustine of Hippo. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tertullian.org\/fathers\/augustine_enchiridion_02_trans.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Enchiridion: On Faith, Hope, and Love<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> See Ch. IV, The Problem of Evil, which provides a useful summary. Trans. Albert C. Outler, 1955. Accessed 2\/29\/2024. See also Augustine\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/45304\/pg45304-images.html#Page_481\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The City of God, <\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/45304\/pg45304-images.html#Page_481\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Vol. 1, Book 12<\/a>. Trans. and ed. Marcus Dods. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 2\/29\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref35\" id=\"_edn35\">[35]<\/a> Wilde, Oscar. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/887\/887-0.txt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Critic as Artist: With Some Remarks upon the Importance of Doing Nothing<\/a>. <\/em>Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8\/7\/2024. The statement by Gilbert is, \u201cWhen man acts he is a puppet. When he describes he is a poet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth Commentary by Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 917-69. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"iawp_total_views":21,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[218,273,274,36,37,275,280,276,279,282,281,277,39,272,253,283,278],"wf_page_folders":[11],"class_list":["post-231","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-tragic-plays","tag-assassination","tag-birnam-wood","tag-early-scottish-history","tag-elizabethan-drama","tag-english-political-theory","tag-female-villains-lady-macbeth","tag-is-this-a-dagger-which-i-see-before-me","tag-king-duncan-of-scotland","tag-king-james-i","tag-lifes-but-a-walking-shadow","tag-macbeth-shall-sleep-no-more","tag-madness-in-shakespeare","tag-raphael-holinsheds-chronicles","tag-scottish-history","tag-shakespeares-tragedies","tag-unsex-me-here","tag-witchcraft-in-shakespeare"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"ajd_shxpr","author_link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/author\/ajd_shxpr\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth Commentary by Alfred J. 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{"id":231,"date":"2024-04-13T21:58:59","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T04:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/?page_id=231"},"modified":"2025-11-18T08:33:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T16:33:05","slug":"macbeth-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/macbeth-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Macbeth"},"content":{"rendered":"